There's not much room to argue with the fact that Democrats are committed to keeping the *long name health care law* otherwise known as Obamacare. There's also not any room to argue that Republicans are against it.

I don't get this - why? The constitutionality point being debated now is the mandate to buy health insurance. Sure there are other parts that expand handouts, but overall people pay for their own stuff, as evidenced by the argument that it's deficit-neutral.

For the sake of argument let's assume that it is actually deficit-neutral. This law then:
- forces a mandate on people
- still has everyone pay for their own insurance
- just for the record, it's very pro-industry

This isn't progressive! I don't get it! I don't like the bill because I am left-leaning. If I was more right-leaning I would probably like the bill more. Has the world gone crazy!

3/28/2012 9:41:11 PM

Communism is the answer.

3/28/2012 9:56:52 PM

Quote :

"but overall people pay for their own stuff, as evidenced by the argument that it's deficit-neutral."

well, there's your first problem. you think it's deficit neutral. it's anything but. they only achieved that by doing 10 years of receipts and 6 years of outlays. that, right there, should tell you something. even then, they pulled the kind of accounting tricks that would make Enron blush. To call it deficit neutral is to be intentionally naive.

3/28/2012 9:57:38 PM

It doesn't make sense because you're still looking at the political system as a left and right system.

left and right are the same party now: They're called Republicrats.

3/28/2012 9:58:20 PM

geniusboy you are mere inches away from becoming a true republican anarchist.

but there's no doubt you're vote will be going to support the one party that clearly is furthest from what you support... so this topic is in vain.

you'll have your dream of obama care soon enough with a 2/3's majority senate

3/28/2012 10:33:58 PM

Quote :

"well, there's your first problem. you think it's deficit neutral. it's anything but."

lol, i wasn't interested in the slightest in arguing that it was. I wanted to put that aside to discuss the basic philosophy of it. For instance, if it's not deficit-neutral, that would likely mean that general funds were going to pay for someone's health care bills, and there is a unique set of fairness and equability questions that would stem from that.

Speaking in the general sense though, a health care bill that pays for itself (if such a thing existed) could only be as much of a handout as it is a new tax, a tax that is specifically levied on health insurance premiums. I'm just asking "is this progressive?"

3/28/2012 11:03:38 PM

It sounds like your objection is that the law doesn't go far enough, not that it is somehow a push in the opposite direction.

But keep in mind the next step the bill's authors had in mind. The bill will ultimately eliminate competition in the insurance industry and create regulators in charge for said insurers, rendering them de-facto government sponsored enterprises.

There is really no effective difference between the insurance industry this bill will ultimately create and nationalization. Sure, the managers will still be appointed by shareholders rather than the civil service, but what they can sell to who for home much and how they can spend the money they collect is dictated by regulators.

^ Ok, so your only objection is that the bill might not divert tax dollars to cover healthcare. Well, it does, trust us, the bill was not and could never have been seriously believed to be deficit neutral. But, let us assume it was. If the Bill had de-jure nationalized the entire healthcare industry, but remained deficit neutral, are you saying that would not be a progressive outcome?

[Edited on March 28, 2012 at 11:13 PM. Reason : .,.]

3/28/2012 11:10:09 PM

^^^I think you have the wrong person.

[Edited on March 28, 2012 at 11:10 PM. Reason : .]

3/28/2012 11:10:48 PM

It's a corporatist gift for the insurance industry.

A public option is better than an individual mandate. Allowing employers to give employees health benefits as a stipend would also help things.

3/28/2012 11:20:15 PM

^
Exactly it is nothing more than a gift horse to the insurance industry (who love to find any way possible to deny claims to those with serious health issues). I don't understand how anyone on the left can get behind this bill.

3/28/2012 11:36:19 PM

Quote :

"If the Bill had de-jure nationalized the entire healthcare industry, but remained deficit neutral, are you saying that would not be a progressive outcome? "

That's a good question!

I think it's a relevant question too. Conservative pundits are always trying to equate the progressive positions with socialism. It's a valid question as to whether there is a philosophical difference between the parties, or if there's just sort of a different nature group that follows one or the other and agrees with more of their agenda. A party's agenda is changing all the time anyway.

I think the liberal position is supposed to be that we institute programs that are compassionate toward individuals, and if we have to suck from the general coffers and tax more then so be it.

Social security is very similar to the current question about health care. People pay and people receive, but we still call that a "tax" do we not? So in effect, we can turn insurance premiums into a tax and then the product is replaced by a government service. But we don't plan on ever calling the health insurance premiums a tax.

I confused myself.

3/28/2012 11:36:49 PM

^^ a gift horse is a bad thing.

3/28/2012 11:38:28 PM

ha, cmon, even you democrats should be laughing at this one:

Quote :

"The administration remains confident that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional; one of the reasons for that is that the original personal responsibility clause…was a conservative idea"

in a few weeks all we're going to be hearing is: "See guys it was Mitt Romneys idea to begin with. He's the guy we were copying and it's of course it's unconstitutional!"

with complete disregard for mentioning state/federal rights at all.

just marking it down now before it goes viral.

3/29/2012 12:17:52 AM

Quote :

"Is Obamacare really a liberal / progressive law? "

no

Quote :

"This isn't progressive! I don't get it! "

No, it isn't. It's actually corporatist. You are now forced to pay for something. It's no coincidence that health insurance companies saw an increase in stock prices after the bill was passed.

Quote :

"I don't like the bill because I am left-leaning. If I was more right-leaning I would probably like the bill more."

I don't like it either. I wanted a public option. Obama (and Rahm Emmanuelle) didn't want a public option. Ever. This has been widely documented now.

Quote :

"Has the world gone crazy!"

yes.

More specifically, Republicans have proven that they are more concerned with regaining power than standing in principle. They are now vehemently against a mandate, even though it was originally the plan of the Heritage Foundation, which is a conservative think tank, and used by Mitt Romney. Now that Obama has endorsed it, Republicans have to shift even further to the right in order to oppose Obama in order to preserve their narrative that he is the evil anti-christ.

Democrats, on the other hand (and Obama, specifically) have proven to be limp-dicked push-overs. They have yet to learn that Republicans will oppose anything and everything they propose because they (Republican leadership) are more concerned with branding Democrats as evil as opposed to actually giving a shit about small-government ideals....

Actually, I don't even believe that anymore. Democrats aren't stupid, they're just complicit. Paid losers. The Washington Generals of political Theatre. Complaining about the big bad Republicans who filibuster and obstruct while steady slinging on the side. They pretend to give a fuck about the average American, but they're bought by the same corporate interests. Whores.

People like to talk about how crazy the Republican party has become, and they have, no question. But one of the reasons why they've gone so goddamn far to the right, is because they HAVE to oppose Democrats, and Democrats keep shifting to the right as well.......so Republicans just go crazy-far to the loving embrace of corporate fascists



[Edited on March 29, 2012 at 12:41 AM. Reason : ]

3/29/2012 12:32:03 AM

I understand the whole impetus for the health care bill. Health insurance in this country after all is fairly expensive and, from my own personal experiences, the companies are never willing to cover entire procedures.

However, I don't get the mandate at all from a purely progressive standpoint. I understand it even less since the "public option" fell flat on its face in the final fort of the legislation. To me, the public option was the whole selling point of the entire thing and made it seem like a pretty good idea. If you can't afford private health care, then go public. Even if the public option would likely be more of a bureaucracy than anything, everybody wins under that arrangement.

The way it seems to be now is that, come 2018 when the mandate comes into effect, you are basically forced to go to a private provider or pay a fine. I don't understand what the legal justification is for forcing people to buy something more or less something that many people in this country can't really afford in the first place (otherwise this legislation would have never existed).

3/29/2012 1:43:11 AM

^^DUMBASS^100

i made a prediction about dems calling it all romneys idea but you used it literally the next post??

IBT
Obamacare = repubicanCare all along in 3....2.....1.....





[Edited on March 29, 2012 at 2:06 AM. Reason : hahahhaa]

3/29/2012 1:48:57 AM

As a Socialist, I'd say it's Fascist in the most academic sense of industry leading government in helping industry. It's not single payer, there's no public option, nor is it universal or equal-access, all of which would have been progressive options. The right's on point, I think, with its critique that the mandate all but forces people to purchase a product on the market, and further legally codifies our slavery to Capital.

Some of the results of the mandate are "progressive" insofar as it attains some progressive goals, like expanding coverage, and has a few progressive stipulations, like exemptions from the mandate for the poor, but other than that I'm not pro-mandate. Obama campaigned on single-payer and that was one reason I voted for him, and was sorely disappointed that this position quickly downgraded to a public option, which downgraded to "Hey let's try something the GOP thought up 15 years ago, they'll definitely get on board for that!" It was a trash idea when they came up with it, and it's a trash idea now when the Democrats try with futility to appropriate it for the sake of bipartisanship.

And to be clear I'm not talking about the whole of Obamacare, just the mandate. Outside of the individual mandate it's definitely quite progressive in very good ways that protect the weak and disadvantaged from the more powerful. Still, it requires the mandate to fund large portions of it, I believe, so I'd much rather just get a public option or a single payer system that cuts out the private insurers altogether. They've failed spectacularly as an entire industry to demonstrate meaningful competition and consumer service, something they get away with only because healthcare is a life necessity and an expensive one at that.

Quote :

"Exactly it is nothing more than a gift horse to the insurance industry (who love to find any way possible to deny claims to those with serious health issues). I don't understand how anyone on the left can get behind this bill."

To be fair there were a host of very progressive regulations that the industry wasn't entirely elated to hear about, like the pre-existing conditions stuff and the "85% of premiums spent on health" rule. But yeah, overall it was a boon for them.

[Edited on March 29, 2012 at 9:10 AM. Reason : .]

3/29/2012 8:57:55 AM

I never felt like I understood the argument for single-payer. I think a part of the logic is that it would reduce some of the billing overhead, which is obviously a huge problem, but I never perceived any substantive argument for (what I find to be) this poorly defined term of single-payer. I'm mostly indifferent until the specifics are more clear to me.

I loved the idea of a public option. It it makes the insurance companies go out of business, then.... yay. I see many arguments for why I would want to opt into the public option. If I was a politician, my first health care objective would be decoupling it from the employer/employment. A public option could accomplish some of this, and I just like taking the simple option. I seriously seriously doubt that the public option would have comparable overhead to private insurance. At least as I understand it, that's kind of the point.

Quote :

"the "85% of premiums spent on health" rule"

So, in a sense, this is the same kind of market distortion that price ceilings are. It's like the minimum wage. Technically, this is true. So a market-oriented political philosophy should oppose this, I should admit that technicality.

That said, who wants their insurance company to pay >15% of their revenue on overhead? Actually, as a consumer, you should want as close to 100% spent on medical costs as possible. Not only that, but as a customer, you would prefer that they don't deny your claims. You wouldn't want a company that had a record of doing this.

Putting that together, it is reasonable to expect that market-based solutions exist for this problem. I think there is usually a role for government with transparency rules, and that would be much more effective than market-distorting rules. After all, if you can do better, why not? For some reason, the consumer is not empowered (or doesn't know they are empowered) to put pressure on insurance company overhead spending.

I remember one article that made the argument that when you go to the hospital "you are not the customer". This is just saddening. If this is true, the market has failed. There is no market to improve value to the patient if we've created regulatory spaghetti loops complicated enough that the hospital no longer serves you.

Is a minimum wage law really progressive if it ultimately hurts low-skill workers? I had one progressive friend who really understood this, and he argued that every law had to be "balanced". If you pass regulations on an industry, for instance, you probably need to evaluate the tariff structure in case the higher standards just sends the production to a nation that doesn't have those standards. Similar here. The discipline to pass balanced legislation certainly isn't there now (who knows if it ever was).

I'm not allergic to progressivism, but if it's done wrong there's no redeeming argument.

[Edited on March 29, 2012 at 9:38 AM. Reason : ]

3/29/2012 9:37:25 AM

Quote :

"That said, who wants their insurance company to pay >15% of their revenue on overhead? Actually, as a consumer, you should want as close to 100% spent on medical costs as possible. Not only that, but as a customer, you would prefer that they don't deny your claims. You wouldn't want a company that had a record of doing this."

heh. no one tell this guy about medicare.

3/29/2012 10:01:03 AM

Quote :

"from my own personal experiences, the companies are never willing to cover entire procedures."

From my own personal experiences I've had 2 procedures that each cost 5 figures and they have both been 100% covered. You might not have great insurance I guess?

3/29/2012 10:02:14 AM

Quote :

"heh. no one tell this guy about medicare."

Oh hey a government program, must be wasteful right? Surely this knee-jerk skepticism could never be wrong! Oh, wait...

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/30/barbara-boxer/barbara-boxer-says-medicare-overhead-far-lower-pri/

Quote :

"A lively academic debate has broken out over whether Medicare’s administrative costs are really as low as 1 percent or 2 percent. The difference stems from whether Medicare essentially freeloads off other parts of the federal government for services that private insurers have to pay for on their own. Adjusted estimates for Medicare’s administrative costs cited by the Urban Institute, a think tank that does research on issues such as poverty and economics, range from 3.6 percent to 5 percent, rather than the 1.3 percent using the data in the trustees’ report. But Edwin Park, a health policy specialist at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that the differences are overblown, since Medicare’s administrative cost total already includes payments to other agencies for such services. We won’t settle this question, but we will point out evidence that even when you control for the differences, Medicare is still considerably more cost-efficient. In one study, CBO found that privately run Medicare plans had 11 percent overhead, compared to 2 percent for traditional Medicare."

Lowball overhead for Medicare is 1.3 percent, high is 5, even the privately run plans top out at 11.


[Edited on March 29, 2012 at 10:07 AM. Reason : .]

3/29/2012 10:02:49 AM

Quote :

"heh. no one tell this guy about medicare."

Medicare is pretty good for the consumer of medicare, so as a consumer you would prefer a product more like medicare. Maybe you're not willing to pay for it, I don't know.

Now the issue of underpayment is different, and also something I don't understand well. Since the system will decide on its own how much to pay doctors, there are many places that won't take it for that reason. So you accept that tradeoff. At some point, market forces have to stratify insurance plans according to the quality medical care anyway.

Although, sometimes I wonder if the progressive position is also to make it so that everyone in the country gets the same quality medical care. Like price floors, I think this is a mechanism to leave people uncovered and an overall disaster. It won't be the end of the world if some doctors have the price of their services bid up.

3/29/2012 11:17:21 AM

yes lets ignore the non-medicare government overhead. cause that doesnt count right? also we can ignore the inneficiencies created by government mandates that insurance companies cant work across state lines. That medicare doesnt cover everyhing insurance covers. That private insurance has a lower claim denial rate than medicare, etc... etc...

3/29/2012 11:25:35 AM

How about the whole "not having profit as a priority" part?

Look Shaggy, you're going to have to do better than that. The arguments you're making there can be applied with equal vagueness to any government program imaginable, they're one-size-fits all copouts. If you have some evidence of the "true, hidden" overhead of Medicare you're claiming, then post it. Otherwise drop it.

Quote :

"That private insurance has a lower claim denial rate than medicare, etc... etc..."

It's easy to have a lower claim denial rate when you can be extra picky and choosy about the people you insure to begin with. Should we count the 40 million people the private insurance industry excludes from coverage altogether as being "claim denials" ?

[Edited on March 29, 2012 at 11:33 AM. Reason : .]

3/29/2012 11:27:11 AM

Quote :

"Medicare is pretty good for the consumer of medicare, so as a consumer you would prefer a product more like medicare. Maybe you're not willing to pay for it, I don't know."

i pay for it now, i just dont get any benefit from it.

Quote :

"Now the issue of underpayment is different, and also something I don't understand well. Since the system will decide on its own how much to pay doctors, there are many places that won't take it for that reason. So you accept that tradeoff. At some point, market forces have to stratify insurance plans according to the quality medical care anyway."

There are no market forces in healthcare. Providers and insurers agree on reembursement rates and that sets the pricing strucutre. In cases where that price is higher than medicaid, those doctors dont take medicaid. it has nothing to do with the actual costs, and entirely to do with how much money they're gonna get from insurers.

If you look at procedure pricing in places with low insurance coverage vs high insurance coverage theres a gigantic difference in pricing, and an almost insignificant difference in quality of care. Insurance distorts the costs of care and eliminates any possibility of typical market forces.

Quote :

"Although, sometimes I wonder if the progressive position is also to make it so that everyone in the country gets the same quality medical care. Like price floors, I think this is a mechanism to leave people uncovered and an overall disaster. It won't be the end of the world if some doctors have the price of their services bid up."

I think the effect of the current system and single payer is essentiall price floors, even if its not the intention. It is a huge problem and we need to fix it.

I think the best bet is price ceilings for common procedures. Bring those prices down to where the consumer can oay for it out of pocket without going broke. Make the costs tax deductable. You'll end up with a system where most people can afford their care and shop around to find the best doctor. At the same time you can have a saftey net for the poorest americans so they dont have to go without care. Then you can also have the government shell out for certain chronic conditions.

Everyone gets healthcare and theres no fucked up middleman to distort prices. Hospitals wouldn't be very profitable any more, but im not gonna lose any sleep over that.

Maybe long term health insurance comes back as an actual form of insurance for single incident catastrophy coverage, but certainly not as a payer for regular maintenance or chronic conditions.

3/29/2012 11:39:39 AM

Quote :

"There are no market forces in healthcare. Providers and insurers agree on reembursement rates and that sets the pricing strucutre. In cases where that price is higher than medicaid, those doctors dont take medicaid. it has nothing to do with the actual costs, and entirely to do with how much money they're gonna get from insurers. "

Well we're bumping up against semantics. What you describe is a market emerging even after government tried to kill it.

Anecdote time!

There was an eye doctor that everyone loved going to. He was just good at what he does. Turned out, there was higher demand for him over other eye doctors. My mom went in for a routine checkup a while ago and got the claim denied. So it went through the typical WTF runaround, and it happened to be that they failed to update their list of in-network doctors. This guy was apparently in such high demand that he stopped taking that insurance because it didn't pay enough and he could do better.

The end.

[Edited on March 29, 2012 at 1:19 PM. Reason : ]

3/29/2012 1:17:19 PM

It is an anti liberal policy. Bad for environment bc no population control. it's anti liberal/nazi. it's just bad.

3/29/2012 4:41:07 PM

lolz, my thread helped spawn a new thread.

3/29/2012 5:24:39 PM

Regarding the OP:

If I'm not mistaken, progressivism has historically consisted of reluctant reform aimed at quieting popular risings, as opposed to making any fundamental changes.

That being said and coupled with comments made previously with regard to the health care law being a boon to the insurance companies while offering only meager reforms, the law appears to be in line with historical progressivism.

I'm not sure that the law could be labeled as liberal without any form of a public option.


Regarding the public option:

I felt like it could have made the individual mandate more palatable to the American public, maybe even more palatable to the Supreme Court. Does anyone else have any thought on how the Supreme Court would have viewed the public option?

It was the most determining factor as to whether I could support the health care law or not.


With regard to the Supreme Court's decision:

If they strike down the entire law, I can't foresee another health care law that includes the public option anytime in the near future.

However, if the Supreme Court merely strikes down the individual mandate, what are the chances that the public option might become a political possibility? My guess is that it would only be achievable if the Democrats regain the House; even then, I think that it would have a slim probability of reaching the president's desk.


Who knows, though? If the individual mandate is struck down as unconstitutional, it perhaps would give the president more incentive to push for the public option. Or would the Supreme Court's decision that the individual mandate is unconstitutional rule the public option out, as well?

3/29/2012 5:36:55 PM

Quote :

"People pay and people receive, but we still call that a "tax" do we not?"

well, we call it a "tax" because we aren't honest enough to call SS what it really is: a Ponzi Scheme at gunpoint.

Quote :

"Even if the public option would likely be more of a bureaucracy than anything, everybody wins under that arrangement."

except for the people who get their care rationed by the gov't when we find out the gov't fucks it up, like many people are saying will happen.

Quote :

"They've failed spectacularly as an entire industry to demonstrate meaningful competition and consumer service, something they get away with only because healthcare is a life necessity and an expensive one at that."

What did you expect to happen when Congress made the entire industry almost completely dependent upon them?

Quote :

"I loved the idea of a public option. It it makes the insurance companies go out of business, then...."

Well, that was the whole point of the public option. hell, it's the point of the ACA, anyway: to destroy private insurance.

Quote :

"If I was a politician, my first health care objective would be decoupling it from the employer/employment. A public option could accomplish some of this"

Actually, you know the EASIEST way to accomplish this? You know, one that doesn't have the government take over 1/6th of our economy? End the health insurance tax break for employees. BOOM, problem solved, and the gov't didn't even need to take any rights away from anyone!

Quote :

"Putting that together, it is reasonable to expect that market-based solutions exist for this problem."

Yes. now we just need to the gov't to STOP fucking up the market! Then maybe it will actually WORK!

Quote :

"Lowball overhead for Medicare is 1.3 percent, high is 5"

Sure. if you ignore how much they cost providers by denying almost every claim that crosses their desk the first time through.

Quote :

"It's easy to have a lower claim denial rate when you can be extra picky and choosy about the people you insure to begin with."

Actually, it's easier to have a lower denial rate when you don't make it an actual policy to deny as many claims as possible the first time through, just for shits and giggles.

3/29/2012 8:40:34 PM

Quote :

"A public option is better than an individual mandate. Allowing employers to give employees health benefits as a stipend would also help things."

Fuck that; a big problem with the way we handle health care in this country is that health insurance is tied to your employment.

3/29/2012 11:46:56 PM

Quote :

"Ironically, many observers think Medicare spends too little on administration, which is one reason for an estimated Medicare fraud loss of one out of every ten dollars of Medicare benefits paid. Private insurers devote more resources to fraud prevention and find it profitable to do so."

3/29/2012 11:47:08 PM

government lately is on a fucking role in the 'how can i control population health, population count, population birth, population death, population everything, everything about controlling the populace' laws


birth control, health insurance mandates, controlling drug distribution, drug prices, availability everything


gonna be interesting how much they can get their claws on and control.

3/30/2012 10:44:03 AM

Providing birth control for voluntary use is not a form of controlling people, it's actually a liberation.

Seriously, when the cashier at McDonalds asks you during your 5th visit of the day, "Do you want cream with your coffee?" do you blow up and yell at them to stop telling you what to do?


[Edited on March 30, 2012 at 11:01 AM. Reason : .]

3/30/2012 10:51:26 AM

yes. people are currently prevented from obtaining birth control



and ipads

and mcdonalds every 10 seconds

and free housing

and free cars

and phones

and LTE broadband

and

and

and

and



great point

3/30/2012 11:10:31 AM

The birth control thing kind of drives me nuts.

How many things are health insurance plans mandated by law to provide? Should birth control be unique? No, it shouldn't. So we've already committed the moral hazard, and a specific group is upset, you don't have any argument to fall back on...

Unless you protest federal involvement in the first place. In which case, fine, let's get them out of everything about health insurance.

3/30/2012 11:12:10 AM

Quote :

"Providing birth control for voluntary use is not a form of controlling people, it's actually a liberation."

If only that was what they were doing. The birth control is not free. You are being forced to pay for it in order to obtain health insurance, then given the option of whether or not to go pick it up at the store. The government is not paying for the birth control, you will out of your premiums.

It is not liberation to be told "if you cannot afford health insurance that doesn't cover a bunch of stuff you'd happily live without, then you must live without insurance that covers things you desperately want."

3/30/2012 11:15:18 AM

Lonesnark before you deliberately steer the conversation to something you can disagree with me more on, since you seem to do that for the sake of it, can you at least agree that providing birth control is not "controlling the populace"?

Like, let's just assume there's a magical fountain that spits out birth control pills, free of cost to everyone including taxpayers, and the government distributed the pills to everybody who wanted them. Would that be a sinister plan to control the populace?

I'm trying to squeeze a reasonable opinion out of you, and force you to put off ranting against the government for 1, maybe 2 posts, but bear with me.

[Edited on March 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM. Reason : .]

3/30/2012 11:28:09 AM

having an iphone(or other smart phone with a data plan) is just as liberating as having birth control too str8foolish.

we should put that in the 'mental health' clause. what do you think?

are you personally against that?

3/30/2012 1:14:39 PM

Are you schizophrenic or do you just frantically shift focus and angle to avoid actually being taken to task for your dumb remarks?

3/30/2012 1:21:46 PM

Quote :

"Like, let's just assume there's a magical fountain that spits out birth control pills, free of cost to everyone including taxpayers, and the government distributed the pills to everybody who wanted them. Would that be a sinister plan to control the populace?"

Hmm, if such fountains existed then why would we need the government to distribute the pills? They'd be so cheap stores would just keep piles of it stacked in the back for free to get people into the store. It is the same way we distribute things that are, while not free, at least cheap, such as salt and pepper, which many stores and restaurants hand out packets off for free.

The purpose of government is to distribute things that we struggle to produce and distribute ourselves, such as clean air and protection against foreign armies.

Quote :

"you at least agree that providing birth control is not "controlling the populace""

No I cannot. You are speaking in non-sequiturs. The government has no resources of its own, so it cannot do anything without imposing its will upon some segment of the populace. Even if all it is doing is either A) drafting some citizens against their will to collect and distribute magical fountain birth control or B) seizing the wealth of some citizens through taxation to then pay for the collection and distribution of magical fountain birth control.

3/30/2012 2:58:55 PM

Fucking hell man you're going so far out of your way to be argumentative here.

Ignore the source of the pills.

Ignore who pays for them.

Ignore how they're distributed.

Let's just assume that a magical charitable Ayn Randian ubermensch is giving them out to everybody because of a misplaced sense of altruism (which does not exist or is immoral or whatever). Just tell me if, from the perspective of people who wake up and find a birth control pill in an envelope that is available for them to ingest if they so choose, are they being "controlled"?

Try, for one moment, to not be argumentative for the sake of it and help me clear 1 piece of false rhetoric from the conversation before we move on to what you came in here to rant about regardless of what the rest of us were saying. When pack_bryan said it was "control" he was not referring to taxation or laws or your fucking bedtime, he was talking about reproductive freedom of people receiving the pills. So why don't you actually address the issue you barged into a conversation of, instead of steering it (as you always do) to more vague topics you can deliver your standard rant on.


[Edited on March 30, 2012 at 3:28 PM. Reason : .]

3/30/2012 3:20:27 PM

Quote :

"Just tell me if, from the perspective of people who wake up and find a birth control pill in an envelope that is available for them to ingest if they so choose, are they being "controlled"?"

I'm a libertarian, so my answer is "Of course not." A charity spending its own resources deciding to either offer something for free or stop doing so is not controlling others. Just as if Walmart decided to stop selling birth control or even if every business in town gets together and decides to stop selling birth control, would not be classified as "control". The rest of us can start our own businesses making and distribution birth control, rendering us immune to the control of other citizens...until those citizens pick up guns and declare themselves either criminals or police officers.

As pack_bryan was clearly addressing legislative and law enforcement sectors of society, he was justified in his use of the term "control".

3/30/2012 3:38:23 PM

Quote :

"Just as if Walmart decided to stop selling birth control or even if every business in town gets together and decides to stop selling birth control, would not be classified as "control"."

Wouldn't that be forming a cartel? That's not libertarian is it?

3/30/2012 4:04:26 PM

Quote :

"Senate Republican staffers continue to look though the 2010 health care reform law to see what’s in it, and their latest discovery is a massive $17 trillion funding gap. “The more we learn about the bill, the more we learn it is even more unaffordable than was suspected,” said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Republican’s budget chief in the Senate. “The bill has to be removed from the books because we don’t have the money,” he said. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/30/another-17-trillion-surprise-found-in-obamacare/#ixzz1qdJSefCW "

3/30/2012 4:14:44 PM

Quote :

"As pack_bryan was clearly addressing legislative and law enforcement sectors of society, he was justified in his use of the term "control"."

Quote :

"government lately is on a fucking role in the 'how can i control population health, population count, population birth, population death, population everything, everything about controlling the populace' laws"

No, he wasn't. He wasn't talking about controlling the people who would provide it otherwise, or controlling the people who'd pay taxes, or any of that. You're trying to inject way more intelligence/nuance into what he says than is actually there. If you don't believe me look at any other thread about birth control he's posted in. For God's sake, he's even spouted the whole "Black people should hate Planned Parenthood because abortion kills so many black babies, Planned Parenthood is racist and genocidal." line. That is, yet again, along the lines of "Offering someone a voluntary option is controlling them."

But go ahead, keep trying to warp the words of the most certifiably insane and nonsensical person on this forum to validate yourself. Clearly this is the best way to attain credibility.

[Edited on March 30, 2012 at 5:05 PM. Reason : ..]

3/30/2012 5:01:55 PM

Yes, but he has not tried to describe the current legal changes as:

Quote :

"Providing birth control for voluntary use is not a form of controlling people, it's actually a liberation."

As for Planned Parenthood, while subsidizing with your own resources certain products is not controlling other people, it certainly does influence them. In that sense, if you want more black babies in the world than there otherwise would be, you should do what you can to marginalize Planned Parenthood.

Quote :

"Wouldn't that be forming a cartel? That's not libertarian is it?"

As forming a cartel does not by itself attempt to control others, there is no libertarian objection. The problems occur when this cartel then attempts to use the tools of force (be it criminals, legislators, or the police) to prevent their customers from breaking the cartel.

[Edited on March 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM. Reason : .,.]

3/30/2012 6:06:47 PM

The bizarre calculus of emergency room charges

Readers share their experiences about the bewildering fees charged by hospitals. Even medical professionals can be baffled by the way costs are determined.

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-lopez-erfollowup-20120401,0,6799675.column

tl;dr:

Medical billing is crazy, here are some absurd stories.
Paying out of pocket is often more expensive than the co-pays with insurance.

I guess this is my problem with assuring that everyone has health "insurance". It's not insurance if it means you pay more when you go to the doctor. That's nonsense with a nonsense cherry on top. Hey, let me pay a monthly premium so that I can pay as much or more when an unexpected bill comes up.

There's no telling how much higher the bills can go if we let the government mess it up further. I'm talking about a fully broken system. It makes me think of the irony of cash being burned for heating in hyper-inflation economies. One day we may all be insured people, fighting tooth-and-nail for the system to let us pay for the doctor out of pocket.

No, that's even more absurd than burning cash.

[Edited on April 2, 2012 at 9:13 AM. Reason : ]

4/2/2012 9:12:27 AM

4/2/2012 11:02:09 PM

First False Propaganda showing Obama is going to win 2012 elections.


New poll shows Obama making big gains with female voters in battleground states

Quote :

"Female voters in battleground states are rallying around President Obama in droves, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday, suggesting a gender gap could pose one of the Republicans' biggest challenges in this fall's general election race."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/poll-shows-obama-making-big-gains-female-voters-170245867.html


We know this isn't true. Their options are severely limited to two shitty shit candidates. If they had to make a choice, the truth is they'd rather pick Obama over Romney. This is true.

It's like choosing to eat cooked horse balls or eat shit. That's all the menu offers. The poll will say 18% more of people would eat horse balls.

4/2/2012 11:22:42 PM